Former San Antonio official Fernando De Leon faces federal charges in alleged bribery scheme

In March 2010, San Antonio police detectives and FBI agents visited the city’s Planning and Development Services Department, the place where real estate projects go to live or die based on whether the necessary permits are approved.

One of the officials who signed off on those permits was Fernando De León, the department’s friendly, soft-spoken assistant director. Investigators headed to his office. De León wasn’t there, but they seized his computer and files. City Manager Sheryl Sculley later fired him, but De León wasn’t arrested.

Until last week.

A federal indictment made public Thursday sheds light on the case against De León. Longtime readers of the Express-News might remember some of the details we had discovered about the case through public records and lots of digging:

Authorities were scrutinizing De León and a permit-expediting company called Rapid Permit Services. Federal officials subpoenaed records at Pape-Dawson Engineers Inc., one of the largest engineering firms in town, to gather information about Rapid Permit Services and possibly others. Pape-Dawson was not the target of the inquiry;

Rapid Permit Services got a plum job at the Rim, an 800-acre shopping center;

De León reviewed and approved some of the paperwork for the Rim that had been filed by Rapid Permit Services;

De León’s sister and possibly his mother were tied to Rapid Permit Services;

At Pape-Dawson, the point of contact for Rapid Permit Services was a project manager named Oscar Rodriguez.

For the first time, the indictment lays out the actual allegations against De León, and describes how he is accused of teaming up with Rodriguez to defraud Pape-Dawson and the firm’s clients.

Check out the most recent story here, and if you want to learn more, here are past posts about the case.

Looking forward to the future of journalism

Read more: